Badly run municipalities do not necessarily reflect lack of qualified professionals and capacity. Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Zweli Mkhize says it is unfair to look at corruption and incompetence as the main challenges to service delivery issues.
He says many municipalities have high levels of professionals and academic excellence and government needs to fight the kind of thinking and oppression.
The minister has challenged black professionals to prove their ability to turnaround underperforming municipalities.
The minister was speaking on the Friday morning to black professionals on how they can give support to distressed and dysfunctional municipalities.
Minister Mkhize recently announced that 7% of the country’s municipalities are classified as well-functioning and about 31% are almost dysfunctional.
Mkhize says there are many obstacles to entry of the mainstream economy by black professionals, adding this especially for those that want to do business and access government programs.
He has criticised the status quo as one of the biggest challenges facing black professional’s today
Government says it wants to seek solutions from black professionals on how to resolve problems facing some municipalities
Zweli Mkhize says:”This is the challenge we put to you, how do we correct the weaknesses that we see and how do we strengthen all these policy decisions so that they are able to deliver for us.”
The minister says it is unfair to look at the challenges facing some municipalities and assume that there are no professionals in those municipalities.
The department says it remains committed to get municipalities to do their job and want to work, partner and bridge the gap with more black professional’s
“In the past five years since 2013 a total of R3.5 billion in meek transfers were stopped and was reallocated from municipalities to better spending municipalities, some of the municipalities are in any case destines to struggle because they have no rates space .”
Between 2013 and 2014 and in the current financial year, a total of 55 municipalities had their annual MIG allocations stopped at least twice.
An analysis conducted revealed that these municipalities have various inherent constraints and are unable to provide the necessary services to people in the required efficient, professional and caring manner.
Minister Mkhize says they are looking at the urgent deployment of technical capacity experts, in the form of District Technical Support Teams, who will provide support to municipalities towards improving service delivery.
In the past five years, since 2012, a total of R3.4 billion in MIG transfers was stopped and was reallocated from under spending municipalities to better spending municipalities.
In the same period, municipalities failed to spend a total of R8.2 billion. Government says the money can be spent better if municipalities meet their capacity needs.
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